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BREAKING — KERRY IDENTIFIES 10-COUNTRY C0ALITION TO FIGHT ISIL. POLITICO’s Philip Ewing has the story, from the NATO summit in Wales: “Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday identified what he called a ‘core coalition’ of 10 nations that could help the U.S. go after Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria — Great Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark.

“Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel met here with counterparts from each of those countries as they seek help from allies to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Officials have offered few details and announced no solid commitments, but Kerry sounded an optimistic note on the sidelines of the ongoing NATO summit.”

“‘In many ways I believe ISIL presents us with an opportunity,’ Kerry said. ‘It’s an opportunity to prove that we have the ability to come together, that our capacities of defense are not so frozen in an old model that we can’t respond to something like this and that we can’t pull ourselves together and effect a coalition of clearly the willing and the capable to deal with ISIL.’” http://politi.co/1qBA7Dz

Ewing, who’s traveling with Hagel, also sends us this dispatch previewing the day ahead:

GET READY FOR ACTION ON SUMMIT DAY TWO. Well, relatively speaking. This is a highly stage-managed international conference, after all. President Barack Obama and the leaders of the Atlantic alliance used yesterday to “wrap their hands” around the problems NATO is confronting, as U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute described it. “And then Day Two … really deals with, OK, so what are NATO’s responses?”

LOOK FOR DETAILS about NATO’s expanded support to Ukraine, the new Ready Response Force and a polite, if less than ironclad, general commitment for European powers to increase their defense spending. The alliance also might commit to rotating more troops through Eastern Europe for military exercises — although probably not the permanent bases that member nations such as Poland say they want.

One important milestone today, however, will be Obama’s planned meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose nation shares a long border with Syria. Hagel also plans a visit Turkey later on his trip.

As for Afghanistan, the problem isn’t NATO, as Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said yesterday. It’s Afghanistan. Alliance members can’t plan on what kind of force they’ll contribute for the post-2014 training and assist mission without a bilateral security agreement, he said. Both of Afghanistan’s would-be presidents have said they’d sign it, but until they do, all NATO can do is reaffirm its general support for Afghanistan over the long term — which it did here yesterday.

DEFENSE FIRMS PONY UP TO GET NEAR THE SUMMIT: The British government is charging defense companies hundreds of thousands of dollars to exhibit near the NATO summit, according to Defense News. “It’s all about visibility,” said one defense executive. “We have been visited by prime ministers and high-level military officers and officials, from parts of the defense establishment we don’t usually see at shows like DSEi and Farnborough.” More here: http://bit.ly/1lLdiP8

HAPPENING TODAY — ISIL BRIEFING: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center are set to brief congressional staffers today on ISIL, ahead of more-detailed briefings for lawmakers next week, Reuters reports. http://reut.rs/1qjE29z

HAPPENING TOMORROW — NAVY TO CHRISTEN USS JOHN WARNER: The Navy will christen its newest Virginia-class submarine, the USS John Warner, tomorrow evening at the Newport News Shipyard. Warner, the former Republican senator from Virginia who also served as secretary of the Navy, will speak at the ceremony, according to a press release. And his wife, Jeanne, will “break a bottle of sparkling wine against a plate welded to the hull to officially christen the ship.”

** The 2014 NATO Summit will highlight the importance of international collaboration and leveraging allied technology — like MBDA’s Brimstone missile — to help maintain military superiority in an age of budget austerity. See Brimstone’s Greatest Hits: http://ow.ly/AS1cw **

WHAT A WEEK. Ukraine, Russia, Iraq and Syria. Headline-grabbing developments in these global hotspots overshadowed a number of events that during any other week would have been huge news. Libyan militias, for instance, overran the country’s capital. Pakistan’s government appeared on the verge of collapse over massive protests that now appear to be cooling off. And Pentagon officials took the rare step of speaking openly about a U.S. airstrike in Somalia intended to kill the leader of the al-Shabaab extremist group, Ahmed Abdi Godane, whose fate remains unknown.

FOR WASHINGTON DEFENSE WATCHERS, THE SHORT-TERM QUESTION is whether the current global chaos will force Congress to abandon plans to shrink the Pentagon’s budget, an issue Defense News explored earlier in the week (http://bit.ly/1Cvd8Ap). Our take is that the global threat environment could lead Congress to approve more Overseas Contingency Operations funding, which isn’t restrained by the current budget caps. But the size of the Pentagon’s base budget is tied up in the larger standoff over entitlement spending and taxes — and that’s not likely to change anytime soon.

THE LONG-TERM QUESTION is what’s causing all the chaos and what can be done about it. For Republicans, the easy answer is the president’s reluctance to get entangled in foreign conflicts is leading to a power vacuum that bad actors are eager to fill. And even Democrats this week urged a stronger response from the president to ISIL, though many of them remain wary of what they consider the trigger-happy policies of former President George W. Bush. Regardless, we expect foreign policy to be on the front burner when Congress returns next week from its long August recess.

WHAT ARE YOU READING? It's time for another edition of our Friday feature where we ask major players in the defense world what they're reading. This week's candidate: Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel Allyn, who says he recently re-read "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership,” by John Maxwell. Calling it “one of the most impactful leadership books I've read and applied over the years,” Allyn says the book “effectively and succinctly reminds us of timeless lessons to positively influence our environment through inspiring leadership.” (hat tip: POLITICO’s Jen Judson)

DEFENSE INFLUENCE, FOREIGN AFFAIRS EDITION: In our latest edition of Defense Influence, we look at U.S. lobbying and consulting firms that represent foreign interests in the global hotspots of Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. In Iraq, for instance, a number of interests have retained Washington lobbyists, including the Iraqi government, the Al-Arabiya political coalition and the Kurdistan Regional Government, which has hired at least two firms: Greenberg Traurig and Squire Patton Boggs. There’s more here, for Pros: http://politico.pro/1t4Cgrc

LEVIN BACKS WEAPONS FOR UKRAINE, KURDS: Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin wants the Obama administration to provide weapons to both Ukraine’s military and the Kurdish forces battling Islamic State militants in northern Iraq. Levin is just back from a trip that included stops in Kiev, Ukraine, and Erbil, Iraq — two of the Obama administration’s biggest foreign policy challenges. After meeting with military and diplomatic leaders in each region, Levin said in a statement he’s convinced providing weapons to both the Ukrainians and the Kurds is the right move.

Ukraine’s request for lethal aid is still being considered and the decision would be made by the White House, the Pentagon said yesterday. So far, though, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the U.S. has given Ukraine $70 million in non-lethal aid. As for the Kurds, the Pentagon has said it’s looking at ways it can arm the Peshmerga directly, rather than having them re-supplied through the Iraqi government.

TOP TALKER — A TEXAS TOWN HAS THREE FULL-TIME POLICE OFFICERS AND SEVEN DoD-PROVIDED ASSAULT RIFLES. That’s according to MuckRock, a website that seeks to dig up government documents. The site has used the Freedom of Information Act to get data on the Defense Logistics Agency program that transfers excess military equipment to local police departments — a program that has come under fire over the images in Ferguson, Missouri, of police using military-style equipment to control protesters. MuckRock has obtained agency-by-agency data for 26 states, detailing “equipment obtained by more than 4,000 police and sheriff’s departments across the country:” http://bit.ly/1xhldIZ

SPEED READ

-- In an op-ed, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney says now is not the time to cut defense spending. The Washington Post: http://wapo.st/1lCXr4K

-- The Army suspends Brig. Gen. John Cho, commanding general of the Western Regional Medical Command, “pending the outcome of an inquiry centered on the command climate of the organization.” POLITICO Pro: http://politico.pro/1t5DTF3

-- The U.S. ambassador to NATO says the first day of the summit “should be looked at as NATO’s attempt to get its hands around the multiple challenges it faces.” POLITICO Pro: http://politico.pro/1CuSKzj

-- A report says Britain next year is likely to miss the NATO spending target of allocating 2 percent of GDP to defense. Defense News: http://bit.ly/1AdxREM

-- More than a million Ukrainians have been displaced by the war, with hundreds of thousands fleeing to Russia. The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1qAkcW0

-- Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) argues that the U.S. needs to come up with better ways of rescuing Americans who have been kidnapped by ISIL and other extremist groups. Defense One: http://goo.gl/ciBcKI

-- A report concludes that a friendly fire incident that killed five American soldiers and one Afghan solider in June was due to a ground team that “collectively failed.” Military Times: http://goo.gl/vh0gqA

WHO’S WHERE WHEN

3:30 p.m. The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs holds a discussion on "The Sword and the Shield: Toward U.S.-Russian Strategic Compatibility.” Participants include Timothy Colton, chair of the Department of Government at Harvard University.